


In Myth Reborn and Dreamt Asunder

by Snailcronomycota



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Catholic Imagery, Dreams, Dreams vs. Reality, Dubious Consent, Freaking out about Dream Incest, Grief, Guilt, M/M, Metaphors, Mindfuck, Mythology References, Paganism, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), References to Norse Religion & Lore, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Repression, Symbolism, losing touch with reality, yes that needed to be tagged
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 21:53:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17733350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snailcronomycota/pseuds/Snailcronomycota
Summary: After Thanos, after the end of the world, Thor comes to be worshipped as a God. Ablaze in sunlight he leads his flock to ancient lands.But at night, when their belief wears off, he's only a man that tries desperately not to mourn, and the shadows in his dreams slowly gain a life of their own...This is a story about a man who did not want to sink into his grief, and found himself drowned instead.





	1. Prologue: Stone Cold, and then

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a One-Shot, but when it hit 10.000 words I decided not to be a dick and to separate it into chapters for legibility. With the effect that now the pacing is screwed. Oh well, here you go, buckle in, and good luck.

When the aftershocks of battle settle, weeks later, everything starts slowing down.

 

There's no way to describe this feeling. There are no words in any single language that could be applied to what's happened. _Nothing_.

 

He's fought battles before, he's even lost battles before. He's seen people die before. He's seen beautiful places be destroyed before. He's seen his brother die before.

 

But this is none of those things. This is something so vast and huge and irreversible that if he even tried to express it, to sort it into parts, to work through each of them, he would spend hours screaming and never reach any sort of valuable distinction.

 

 

*

 

 

Wakanda is grey and metal and people talking, grieving, crying. People dressed in gradients of graphite. He stays and helps: transport the fallen, clear the rubble. Listen to the remaining familiar faces trying to sort things out.

 

But that's it, and eventually the things to do run out. They would rebuild, but they don't know even where to start. There's a shortage of architects or a shortage of miners or a shortage of people who will know how to begin.

 

Grey dust, grey smoke. Grey skies.

 

Thor goes away before the few familiar faces that remain become too grey to look at.

 

*

 

There's nothing to do, so he walks through grey plains and finds villages and tries to help. He stops everywhere, but it soon becomes obvious that he's looking for something he is never, ever going to find, like digging through shapes seen in piles of ash and only managing to lift dust clouds and stain the colour away from his hands.

 

He sees flashes of dark grey and rubble, in space, on a spaceship. He feels metal all around him, heavy and immobilizing, as if he'd been cast into stone, and he can't move, and he can't do _anything_. He needs to escape the grey, so he walks on and on, changes city and people often.

 

Some people grieve, and he tries to do it with them. But the knot in his head has calcified and sits heavy and grey and impenetrable in his head, and whenever he tries picking at it it just spews anthracite storm clouds above. The sky is grey enough already without his futile help so he just keeps walking.

 

*

 

Every city he comes across is just another pile of stone and concrete, and eventually, the people trying to pile the stones stop. Dust dries their eyes.

 

It settles, then:

 

It's over.

 

Thor tries to keep occupied, but stone turns to dust and rinses between his fingers, and they all see it too, and they just start saying aloud what everyone thinks: the world has ended.

 

It's simple, and simple is a welcome breath of clarity from the pile of smouldering rubble that filled every head with smoke before.

 

So, naturally, all efforts fall apart. They settle for a word that at first carries no meaning for Thor, and later becomes quite easy to grasp:

 

Apocalypse.

 

Apparently, it's been talked about a lot, but it's not a new concept by far: the belief that Earth, or mankind, would eventually be destroyed. He reflects: it's Ragnarök, nothing else. Thousands of different cultures and they all arrived to the same conclusion: civilization would end one day.

 

And now it has. And it makes it easier. It takes off the burden of trying to grief, to adapt, and to move forward; takes away the pressure to rebuild and the guilt of doing so. It halts everything. Gives all of them a pause to breathe. A welcome respite.

 

*

 

Still, Thor keeps moving through grey days and starry nights where he lies awake.

 

Someone asked him, back when they were still trying to mourn their losses and he was helping where he could, who he was, and he answered God of Thunder. Now someone greets him with that, maybe seeing the clouds hover above them he's not even sure aren't his.

 

It's not that they know who he is. It's that they know _what_ he is. 

 

It's just like with the Apocalypse: it's a symbolic break with the definition of Earth they had before, and now gives way to a new world, devoid of responsibility. Somehow, this is soothing. Somehow, it helps break with who  _he_ was before.

 

*

 

 

The grey stops, the cities stop. He reaches a desert, and crosses it, and when the cities return they're dull white and beige but no longer grey.

 

His feet wander through sand on this continent called Africa, the same gigantic landmass that housed the grey Wakanda. Yet he's somewhere very different, somewhere where the word for Apocalypse used to be  _Yawm al-Qiyāmah_ : a nother belief, or the same—not every Midgardian has the same knowledge, so they all say different things, use different words, affirm or reject beliefs altogether.

 

Thor is a God himself, so he doesn't know what to think about the rejection of belief.

 

It's easy and natural to accept, being recognized and admired and called God of Thunder. It was never anything more than another title, like Son of Odin; but the fall of civilization has made humans brittle and frail, desperately trying to stick to anything that would hold them together, so they latch onto this title with hunger.

 

Maybe life isn't so bleak or so scary when there's symbols to apply to it. The apocalypse is a symbol. Thor easily becomes one.

 

The word spread, and now they follow him.

 

It's different from having friends, or from having a kingdom. At first it wasn't, when he still talked to them. But eventually, as weeks passed and the memory of how the world had been before dissolved, he started to _feel_ different. More alive, or rather, more _than_ alive. There is no way to describe it, and he ceased to try, and ceased to see them as able to understand.

 

In his aimless wandering, stopping wherever to eat and to sleep and followed by an assortment of different people, he's reunited quite the flock, and it keeps on growing every day.

 

*

 

 

He feels their worship cruising through his veins, and it spurs him on.

 

 

*

The nights are different.

 

As soon as he stops wandering, as soon as his feet stop setting the pace, the haze of worship wears off. As soon as these humans that cling to him with adulation fall asleep, he's Thor, who fought alongside humans as an Avenger, who loved a human woman once. He's the same. And he isn't just a god: he's a person.

 

It hurts.

 

It was worse before, he tells himself: worse when they were all trying to mourn, because he could not stop thinking about it: Loki's last gasps for air, Thor motionless in an iron grip, condemned to watch. Loki's skin turning purple with burst blood vessels.

 

His body dead and turned thing, just _lying_ there. He'd never left a body behind in the past, his brother, whom he'd lost twice before and mourned twice before.

 

He saw the world end twice, and now he moves on. He saw his brother die thrice, and just _can't_.

 

But now he has _them_. The thrum of their worship nestles into the crevices of his mind, stops his spiralling thoughts in the day. Yes, it was worse before, when he thought about it, when he confronted it. Now none of them do, any more.

 

He wants to be impassive and almighty.  _Their_ definition of a god. The god to lead them in the Apocalypse—far above the king that led another people in Ragnarök so long ago.

 

He tires himself out through walking so that he sleeps like a stone... but with each passing day, with each person that starts seeing him as a symbol of new hope, he gets more energy. He wonders how long he'll be able to keep the dreams away. They've always come, before.

 

(Loki alive and well and not a tryst between them and then Loki dead and real and--)

 

He doesn't think about it.

 

*

The light shifts. The grey breaks away softly. It's a change in seasons, but also in the number of people that see Thor as something different.

 

They pray to him, and it's the sweetest surge of power.

 

One night he lies awake, putting sleep off, and his purpose crystallizes: shows up clear and bright in his mind as the myriad of stars the sky displays in these southern nights. He was a wanderer before, but now he knows where to go.

 

He's a god, and there's a land he used to be worshipped on. He'll reclaim it.

 

Simple.

 

*

 

 

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knows that he's only pushing it down, and that everything he pushes down will need to resurface some day, turned into tempest. But he can't now. He feels feeble. He needs pause. So he _keeps_ pushing it down. Keeps walking away from it.

 

It's easier to put off sleep now. And north is easy to find, as well, and it gives him a direction to follow.

 

*

 

The power he feels when the sun shines is truly elevating. It takes away everything else, and allows him to stop musing, to stop thinking, makes that iron grip and his inability to save him and the unstoppable purple hand dissolve in air and yellow. Within the gloating sun he's purpose and he's promise. Within the glaring light he's storm.

 

They no longer address him, and he no longer stops to rest. He wanders and if he leaves them behind, he knows they'll follow the legends they tell each other of him.

 

He stands on a cape and looks at the sea, and when the mist clears, the last remnants of grey disperse, he can see the other side, and knows that it's called Europe.

 

He doesn't need to give the order for them to build a ship, doesn't need to steep down and instruct them.

 

Planet Earth is round, north goes up. It's easy to envision that everything he wants to push down he can push down now, and bury it here in ochre sands. He feels awake and humming electric.

 

Before he steps on the ship they've built or fixed or procured in whichever way, he leaves Stormbreaker on the shore along with the image of all he used to be and all he used to think about. The day is clear and there's not a speck of grey. He thinks he'll never need to sleep again.

 


	2. In Myth Reborn

And yet, the very first thing that happens when they set foot on this new land is a return to the old.

 

The sky is grey upon arrival on the shore, and his eye feels heavy, dry, droopy. His eyelids drop.

 

He snaps. He's angry, _impossibly_ angry—he left it all behind, after all, he crossed an entire sea and yet now he notices that it really wasn't as easy to bury as not sleeping any more.

 

The temptation is strong to be a puny god and pay his fury with those around him. He crackles with sparks and wants to burst, wonders now if it was a good idea to leave Stormbreaker lying on the southern shore; guilt threatens the edges of his sleep frayed mind, and with guilt for the axe comes guilt for leaving, and with guilt for leaving comes guilt for not being able to save--

 

No. _No._ He can't do this now, he can't allow this to happen. He can't throw a tantrum at people who haven't done him wrong, and he can't let all of this in. The only way out is to drift off.

 

As soon as he allows his eyes to linger on a blink, he sinks.

 

 

*

 

 

It's a dream, and Thor knows this, because he feels again, and he feels so much more, and remembers that feeling this much, this at edge, this threatened, this eager and out of control was a thing of the past. Tantrums and puny rage, an arrogance and pride his developing body could not hold—those were in the past.

 

He remembers getting Mjölnir, when his thunder wasn't something he could control. He remembers this feeling distinctly: the knowledge that there was something so great and uncontainable within him that it needed to be channelled. It wasn't good and it wasn't bad: it was a given, something he'd need to learn to live with.

 

He remembers his father, proud, and his mother, nostalgic, and his brother, observant and impossible to read.

 

Now he knows that that was when they started to grow apart.

 

He's older in his dream now, and down at his feet, Loki dissolves in spasms; he's being electrocuted by a device on his back, the same device Thor had in his neck, but Thor doesn't control it with a remote control but simply with a flick of his wrist.

 

He feels power: his brother was his enemy, sometimes. It feels good to hurt when you can, when you have the power to. He relishes in the image of Loki, tortured, paying, down at his boot.

 

Then Loki turns purple and burst and broken.

 

Thor doesn't know how to stop the device and the need to protect his brother overcomes him, he panics, he falls to his knees and looks at Loki's green eyes and screams his name _\--_

 

And he finds he's screamed the word into the night, and woken up.

 

This is why he doesn't want to sleep.

 

*

 

 

The nights are long, but the weather down here barely lets on that it's winter. Some days, like that first one, are grey, but most are blue with but a veil of cloud to pale its saturation. It's chilly, but never cold, at least not on the first nights when they move northwards, abandoning the coast for highways still littered with cars.

 

Yet despite the mildness of temperature, the day he arrived seemed to be the exact day of the winter solstice. He doesn't mind the world around him much, nor does he pay attention to the length of the nights; but he hears it around him, hears it in hushed conversations that mention 'Christmas' and 'Yule' and change the balance between the two.

 

It doesn't matter what they're celebrating, but he sees it as a welcome. He sits at a fire and doesn't speak but eats while others exchange tales. They have light, still, powered with tiny cylinders called batteries, and so they sit among strings woven with glowing orbs, dozens of them, some twinkling off and on to mirror the skies above.

 

Thor always loved the Midgardian's affinity for things such as these, that served no purpose other than to be delightful to the eye. He wonders what other inventions he just never got to inspect so closely. But it does him no good to wonder, because it's over now, so he moves away from them, away from their blinking lights, and looks up at the sky.

 

With every tale they exchange, he feels his power growing ever so slightly, the mains hum that flows with the sound of his blood stir and buzz louder than its gushing. He knows that they see him and know what he is, that there's something in his demeanour that gives it away. Stormbreaker or not, they recognize him as a god. They, unlike himself, do not doubt.

 

It pleases him, prides him. A feeling of superiority spreads within him, and he doesn't question its comfort. He hasn't felt something good in a long time. He allows it to soothe him, sees no harm in it.

 

But even this does not soothe the incoherent pain of his dreams, the flashes of memory and absurdity and guilt that jumble in his mind when he's asleep. Sometimes he's lucky and doesn't remember in the morning, sometimes they're more vivid, like that first one ashore, when he felt impulse, then power, then grief.

 

He knows how dangerous dreams are, but he can't stop them any way.

 

*

 

 

His teeth crack and fall, one by one. He sinks to his knees and chokes on spit or blood, whichever it is, the feeling of it warm and heavy in his throat. His exposed gums feel numb. There's thick ends sticking out in some parts, nerves laid bare, but they don't hurt, merely feel disgusting and wrong. He stares in shock at the floor covered in teeth.

 

Loki wades through them, picks up a handful, then looks him in the eye and shakes his head in disappointment. He wants to cry out that if any of them should be disappointed, it's him, but then he realizes that that's not true any more.

 

He's forgiven him, and wants nothing more than his forgiveness in return, but all Loki can give him are his own fallen teeth.

 

 

*

 

They tell stories of him he's heard before, some he's heard of other gods. He doesn't care where they get them from, so long as they get told.

 

They disregard old newspapers that might show his picture, and instead some talk about music where he's mentioned, others look for books. They find metal or plastic replicas of Mjölnir to wear around their necks, or cut off the lower part of the tiny crosses that used to imply another faith.

 

They mix him with that other one, call him saviour, call him many names. Thor just wanders on and doesn't engage.

 

They speak of resurrection, and he wants to strike them all with lightning, electrocute them until their veins burn blue.

 

_He_ was never dead, he wants to tell them.

 

(And letting in such a thought, that such a thing would even be possible—they're fools, fools for this ridiculous hope).

 

But he wants no part in what they say, doesn't even want to listen; it's nothing but a fiction of theirs, anyway. He wants nothing more from them than the feeling that he's talked about, followed, loved.

 

And that, he is. And it takes away the thoughts. It makes the cacophony of them dissolve into the low hum of electricity until he's power and light.

 

The mornings where he doesn't remember his dreams grow scarcer, but the sun makes their nonsense burn away.

 

(Only the things that do make sense remain, but he does his best to push them down as well.)

 

*

 

 

Dreams are not real, but they aren't exactly fiction, either.

 

They represent wishes and things one can not confront bottled up and pushed down into the depths of the mind.

 

Thor knows this. He does. And he knows that the more he pushes things down, the worse his dreams will get. But wishes and things one can not confront are only real and threatening for someone who is not a god, and since Thor is a god during the day and does not let himself be anything else, he feels no need to think about this further.

 

*

 

They worship the sun, although its hours are still sparse, and they see him as its harbinger: he's bringing them closer to Summer, to warmth and life; he's leading them and bringing them truths.

 

 

*

 

 

His dreams turn more vivid every night, and he fights desperately not to give them meaning, but sometimes meaning just slithers into them in sneaky afterthoughts.

 

Loki kneels, and Thor takes off his golden helmet, smiles, slings it over his back with a chain to take as a trophy. Loki's mouth is sealed tight, a disapproving stern line.

 

Thor pinches his cheek and Loki slaps his hand, but then Loki throws his arms around his legs and asks for help and he's a child in need of his older brother.

 

Thor, a child himself, promises to protect him.

 

When he wakes, he wishes he'd stayed silent. Silence is golden. Gold is truth.

 

But this is what he makes of it after waking up, so he can't be sure it's the truth at all.

 

*

 

 

Thor is not afraid of nightmares, but pleasant dreams he doesn't trust in the slightest.

 

With nightmares, you always know: you can fight. If they're just another dream you can wake up and shake them off, or if they seem real you can find out if they're prophetic, and then you can prepare.

 

Dreams, on the other hand, the sort of dreams where wishes gain the upper hand and you desperately want to hold on to the hope they offer, are dangerous. Thinking they're prophetic is the worst sort of danger, but the alternative feels even worse, leaves a man broken: the bleak and bitter disappointment of realizing that it was nothing but a dream.

 

 

*

 

 

Mythologies start when questions arise. When there's a need for guidance. When there's a need for a satisfying truth, better than the known one. They are an instrument of understanding, and of coping. They help put names to the unspeakable, metaphors to better grasp and re-frame and envision what needs to be processed. They help change, in the minds, that which can not be changed outside of it.

 

Thor doesn't care: it's daylight, and he wanders.

 

He is not the same Thor he was before, and the people tell different tales of him now, explain him differently to each other. He's lightning, and light, and the Sun. He's gold, and silence, and Truth.

 

He walks in silence, but he finds himself talking quite a lot, in his dreams. He remembers that he liked to talk, but during the day he does not miss it. Perhaps it's that there's no one to talk to, perhaps that he doesn't see these people as equals.

 

They are flock.

 

And Thor always hated this; he hated it on this father and he hated it on Loki—this idea that others are to be ruled, that they are beneath them—but if they are to see him as human, how will he be a god? He knows that this feeling of divinity is a feeble one, and he can't stand to lose it just yet.

 

And Loki tells him so. “You're running away from your problems” he smiles. He's dressed in Midgard clothes, and looks like a witch. Thor can't stop his smile at this, his brother's fashion sense.

 

“How so?” he answers.

 

“You're behaving in ways that will allow you to stop thinking about them.”

 

Thor tugs at his black jacket, and Loki huffs indignantly. Thor laughs because he loves it when Loki is frustrated, when he can tell that everyone else is too slow for him. He loves how smart he is, this small child who read through every book and mastered every spell. And when he thinks of him like this, it's easy to see why he forgets his words: Loki is to be found endearing, not to be listened to.

 

“Loki” he says, and shakes his head., smiling. “Loki.”

 

When he wakes up, his words are gone, but the sense remains that maybe this was his mistake: he was condescending. He never took him seriously. But then Thor groans and shakes his head.

 

Dreams aren't real, so why would anything valuable be taken out of them? He has no lessons to learn from fiction.

 

 

 

*

 

 

He halts when he hears his brother's name spoken behind him.

 

They can't tell, because he keeps walking immediately, but it still made him pay attention to their nonsense. It had only ever been Thor before, and all the names they gave him, old and new: god of Thunder, god of Light, Saviour; All-father.

 

They keep blending what they knew with what they're making up, so he doesn't mind. And it's no wonder, then, that Loki serves a purpose: they do call him old names—Lie-smith, Silver tongue, Trickster—but they also dub him Other, Dark One, Serpent.

 

He's there so Thor can have an opponent. Simple.

 

He reflects. Humans like thinking of light and dark, day and night. It's natural. He learns that they equate him with 'God' and his brother with 'Devil', and in their mythology there's only one of each, and it suits him fine as long as they do not stop worshipping.

 

He learns that, in dreams, he yells his brother's name, and so they think that at night Loki visits him and they fight.

 

It's a reality much easier to accept than the fact that Loki will never visit him again, so he lets them talk.

 

*

 

 

He's growing in power with each step he takes, finds himself relishing in it. It's a feeling close to returning to Asgard victorious, the smiles he used to bear when their applause echoed through the golden halls. Only now he doesn't fight any battles, and he doesn't smile any more.

 

He dreams about Idunn's Orchard, the taste of apples. Loki throws one at his head with such force that it bursts and runs away laughing. Then they eat, grinning at each other while knee-deep in apples, and he feels his teeth grind into them, breaking the flesh, freeing the juice, it drips down his chin and fills him with taste.

 

He wakes up drooling but not hungry, and only then realizes, drowsily, that he hasn't ate in _weeks_.

 

He adjusts easily, because it feels _right._ He doesn't eat any more, and finds that he does not miss it any more. He runs only on belief, now.

 

On belief, and on sleep.

 

He stopped trying to understand why it's never enough belief to remove his body's need for rest. He doesn't need it often, puts it off whenever he can, but it still catches up.

 

He dreads his dreams more, now. They're starting to get more and more logical. He knows less when he's dreaming, and remembers more when he wakes up.

 

 

*

 

 

Loki sits down next to him and he's clad in black and silver. He's dosed warm in the sunshine from the sunset in front of them.

 

He says something and offers him an apple, but it disappears before he can eat it. It doesn't matter, anyway; Thor no longer needs to eat.

 

He lets his gaze wander over the horizon in front of them, the sky red and yellow, and Loki looks at it too, smiling. They're looking forward and laughing now, but it feels like they've been laughing for hours, jesting; maybe Loki made a joke, or Thor did, he doesn't remember that either, but they can't stop the laughter that rolls forward from them, clear and simple.

 

Thor remembers when they were children, when Loki would prank others, even Odin. He was a trickster after all: he loved to joke, could barely contain his glee on those hazy past days, before they even knew what power was. And when Loki convinced him to pull a prank on someone, Thor would end up compromised and try not to laugh and give off what they'd been up to, and he would fail every time, the pressure of not being allowed to laugh too heavy to bear.

 

Now it feels just like that. Just like he shouldn't be laughing but can't stop giggling like a toddler, and Loki's eyes are bright green and filled with laughter to the brim, so much that it threatens to spill: beautiful and pure. Thor laughs even louder and brings a palm to his brother's shoulder, so hard he reels forward, but Loki just keeps laughing and leans into the fraternal touch.

 

He doesn't take his hand away from Loki's shoulder and they shake with laughter until he wakes up grinning from ear to ear, and when he realizes, drowsily, that he's opening his eyes and coming back he still tries to close them again--

 

But the dream is _gone_. He winces, keeps his eyes closed and tries to sink, tries to find it again, please, please.

 

Slowly reality drowns his smile, a dead weight on his chest, like Mjölnir used to keep someone captive. It's futile to keep his eyes closed, he's wide awake now, and would never be able to sleep with this deep, indescribable feeling of loss and dread that washes over him heavy and cold.

 

He'll _never_ hear that laugh again. No matter how badly he wanted to hold on to that sound, he'll never see his smile, or hear his jests, or make him chuckle. In mischief or in sarcasm or in genuine glee, he will NEVER hear Loki laugh again, because Loki is DEAD.

 

He lies still and tries not to think about it, pushes it down, waits, waits—until the morning prayers come, and the current of them buzzes through his veins, reminding him again of what he is now. He doesn't let the feelings return, drowning them instead in the sweet flow of his follower's belief.

 

 

*

 

 

The All-father fought The Other and thus the world was destroyed, they say.

 

He wants to protest. He can't believe how forgetful these humans are, how stupid; they just follow him around babbling nonsense and don't remember that not so long ago they were so very different. Did they just forget their entire lives, everything they'd achieved?

 

But he catches a glimpse of himself on the window of an abandoned store, and sees how long his beard has grown, how his hair reaches his shoulders again in a filthied tangled mess, and realizes that he does not know at all how much time has passed.

 

He thinks the people around him might all be different than the ones that followed him yesterday, but he can't be sure because he didn't look at their faces. He feels, then, for a second: feels shame, clear as a knife in his gut, at seeing other people like blank and replaceable assets.

 

But if he lets that in, he'll let everything else in too, and the disappointment from waking up and realizing he will never laugh with Loki again is not something he _can_ let in again. He shuts it all out and reaches out to the feeling of their faith again, and finds it there, humming through him, so he lets them explain it however they want to. They're stupid, but they believe, and he's adored. That is all that matters, their adoration.

 

He is the All-father now, _their_ Father, and he accepts his new role with ease. Odin is a figure that only matters in his dreams if at all, for he is dead, like everyone else, but Thor remains, and if they need him to be but an impassive Father, that he'll give them.

 

Their system has taken root, established, now they organize: on a grey winter day, the first priest emerges.

 

He comes to Thor and bows deep, and Thor feels a surge of power raise from his toes to the crown of his head. It's pleasant.

 

He talks about the arrival of spring and the sun and Thor's light, and he offers him food and drink. The food he doesn't need but the drink he takes gladly, honey wine in a bottle. It's not a barrel of Asgardian mead, but it's close enough, and it gets him drunk.

 

When asked, he's lulled so far away by the alcohol that he tells him a story. The priest drinks in his words like everything he says is golden, so Thor keeps drinking, and keeps talking, and when he falls asleep that night his dreams are alight with stories of the past.

 

The Warriors Three and Sif are there, and they hunt. Reality is woven out of spun gold, and threading its fabric feels like basking in sunlight, like mead that drops from a golden cup to his mouth, the honey taste lingering in the back of his throat.

 

He fights beasts and slays them red, and he feels camaraderie and friendship, laughter and the drunkenness of celebration. But also the moment when he arrives home, victorious, and Loki emerges from behind a shadow, scarcely seen.

 

Loki is dressed in black and his hair is black and his eyes are smart and silver-green.

 

Thor is covered in warm blood from head to toe, red on silver, and when Loki puts a black-gloved hand on his shoulder and smiles the blood turns green and the silver turns gold.

 

Where before all was loud and bright and filled with exaltation and noise, now Loki and him walk and it's peace. His demeanour is wise and calm. He's shadow, but mostly: he is shade, shade from the scorching sun. He is cold and it cools his burning skin.

 

Others tell him that he's dark and cold and shadow and slyness and he knows how it all sounds, that he should have seen it coming, and he's very close to Loki and looking into his eyes when his cold, cold dagger buries between his ribs and it hurts, it hurts so much, that they were right and that he should have known.

 

The Warriors Three and Sif are back, drenched in blood like him, and they knew and they warned him and he never wanted to listen. And the Midgardians around them too, they say Loki is evil and Thor is good and it seems _every one_ knew, except for him.

 

So he screams at them all that they're wrong, that nothing's so simple, that they don't know his brother like he does, but not a sound comes out, so he tries harder, until he wakes up.

 

He's not hung over. The priest sits still and watches him, a black-robed creature, and he feels reminded of his brother's slyness, his taste in the shadow. It makes him uneasy for a short moment, but then the sun returns and he feels the familiar haze of walking on the solar wind.

 

He tells the priest to depart and doesn't deign him even one more glance.

 


	3. ...and Dreamt...

The stories shift slowly, each time he lifts a foot off the ground and sets it down again.

 

They divide the world into Summer and Winter and into Light and Shadow. But where they used to see a fight now they see a cycle and a chase, and they see that in the chase there's a longing.

 

Now they think that one can't be without the other, that one must always follow the other, that they circle each other restlessly and their motion is what keeps the planet turning.

 

And so, they start praying to Loki, as well.

 

First, Thor feels anger, then a desolate sadness. He's dead, he wants to say, but their understanding of this is: he's dead, and that's the way it's supposed to be. He is dead so Thor can be alive. He is cold so Thor can be warm.

 

And if he's dead it only means their prayers reach far beyond this realm into his realm of death and shadow. So his death marks only polarity.

 

Thor can't think about that, because if he does he'll _feel_ , so he lets them believe and he lets them pray and takes no offence at the way they wish to see the world.

 

*

 

 

Another priestess greets him after he crosses a frontier. There's still frontiers, he finds—people with guns and with clothes different from the ones his followers wear. But he hasn't had to fight once, not because he wouldn't want to, but because striking humans would be as difficult and accomplishing to him as brushing the black dust of rot off a fruit.

 

He does not wonder why people know about him even before he reaches them, doesn't find the interest in it. There are ways for human news to travel, this he knows. And he feels belief, so he does not mind.

 

She's an old woman, this priestess, broad and soft-looking, but everyone follows her words like a general's. She still means nothing to him, nor her story. But at night she fills him with ale, and her followers feast in his honour, rabbits skinned and grilled, eggs and chicken.

 

He does not sit with them. He watches them, at first, drinking. He sits with his feet dangling from a terrace, the roof of a now abandoned building, and in the courtyard they have twinkling lights and a harsh, noisy music and a big office table where candles burn. They get drunk and they laugh and yell.

 

The sky tonight is obscured with clouds, and he knows the morrow will again be a grey one. Yet he gathers that what they are celebrating is the end of their planet's winter. He retreats to the centre of the roof, where their sounds dull a bit but he's still close enough to feel their joy and their drunkenness and their praise.

 

He's starting to drift off to sleep, feeling safe within their noise, when they bring an animal. He doesn't hear it, simply _feels_ it, feels how they go quiet and turn down the music and chant. He doesn't open his eyes. He doesn't stand up.

 

He feels it when they gut it on the office table and its blood rinses down and douses the ground.

 

And Thor would tell them to stop, that it is barbaric, what they're doing—but it's a sacrifice in _his_ name, in the name of _his_ strength, and he feels a rush of pride and vigour in his veins: a celebration of his wins, so that now he may rest. He hums contentedly, and as the beast's blood seeps into the ground, his own flows with an appeased current, and the low grumbling of thunder echoes his yawn.

 

The rain comes as an afterthought. He gifts it to them and falls asleep in the downpour.

 

 

*

 

 

In his dream he slashes through armies and remembers fighting. He remembers New York, his brother's golden horned helmet.

 

He feels the power curse through his veins, but there's the sound of soft rain as well, and the feeling of having accomplished something, of it being over, and suddenly he comes down from his surge of power and remembers, really remembers: this was not as good as it feels now. This hurt. This is a pain in his soul he does not want to turn into another one of their stories, _they_ are not something he wants to seep into his dream. It is time to rest, now.

 

He remembers bathing, as a child. He remembers splashing Loki with water and delighting, squealing, at something so simple as the indignant look of protest on Loki's face right before he splashed him back.

 

He remembers squabbles and fights in the golden halls of Asgard.

 

Then Loki, adult, stands before him once more. He raises a tankard of ale and they talk of battle and of Odin. Loki is naked, like he was in the bath. A normal sight, nothing he hasn't seen before, natural and familiar. His brother. Why would it be different now?

 

They bathe together and Loki looks indignant when Thor splashes him, but then they laugh again and squeal.

 

He wakes up smiling again, the sun shining down on him. He's drenched in water, slight drizzle still falling on his skin.

 

He's moved onto the bloodstain of the animal they slew for him, lies in bloodied mud, but no one is anywhere near; he's alone.

 

And in this moment, sitting up, he wants nothing more than to weep, for his lost brother, for the strange tint of shame that rushes his consciousness after the dream is over. He knows he should not feel bad, but he does when Loki's wet skin won't disappear from his mind.

 

But the thankfulness for his rain reaches him in a slow intake of breath, and he regains the way to be more theirs than his own soon enough, and the dream vanishes. He's God. He's the Allfather. He's the Light. And they thank him for the crops that will be born of this downpour.

 

So he stands up, and marches on.

 

*

 

The parks are filling with green, and with flowers, and with rabbits. They reproduce without predators and turn into a plague.

 

His followers sacrifice them in his name often, and each sacrifice is a bout of euphoria.

 

He thinks they merely sacrifice them to him because they're copious and available.

 

 

*

 

 

The days turn longer again. His beard and his hair keep growing.

 

They keep following him, but more than that, they spread the word of him. He floats on their worship now, it feels as though his feet no longer need to carry him. He thinks less and less, simply feels the sun on his back and their voices behind him.

 

The stories have changed once again.

 

They appropriate old symbols of other cults that passed through these lands before, change their context, make them part of his mythology. It feels wrong to allow them this. But feeling wrong is still feeling, and so he lets it slide. He isn't a moral God; that was never the point. They're to do with the tales they whisper as they please.

 

And when he floats above the ground, what worth do their explanations have?

 

_The high and Mighty Thor,_ Loki whispers in his mind.

 

He shakes his head at the bout of panic that surges through him. No, his memories and his past and his consciousness belong to the night, to his dreams, where they won't cut so deep.

 

It's just the spirit of the Lie-smith, their voices echo. They know him well, they describe him aptly—the god of Lies. They tell each other that Thor is the Truth, and he leads the realm of the real, and Loki is fiction and Lie and dream. But humans need lies and fictions and dreams to live, they say.

 

Maybe the truth seems too cruel, nowadays. He sees the worth in that. He accepts it as valuable.

 

Loki is the God of all the ones that are gone; he's the vanishing, and they're all with him, now, living in another world just like this but not as real: the shadow realm. And at night the worlds merge, and that is why they all see their loved ones at night.

 

It has such a hopeful tone to it, such a lovely denial—the ones that are gone are not really gone, they just exist in the realm of lie. But isn't that the truth? Isn't it impossible to lie in a belief like this, isn't it impossible to be wrong?

 

His head hurts, but his feet float.

 

*

 

 

“Poor you. Now you can't even forget me when you're awake” Loki says slyly and grins,

 

_silver tongue, prince of lies_ they whisper

 

and Thor can't remember if he fell asleep or didn't, because he's still lying on the floor, face up, like he did when he went to sleep. But then he reasons that Loki is dead and therefore can't be here

 

_his tongue was like a snake's and if he licked you you'd fall into lie_

 

and this death hurts so much that he jostles awake. He looks around.

 

He tries to calm his beating heart. He heard the echoes of their voices, and his mind startles even more awake when he realizes that the things they say are seeping into his dreams, that they're taking root even when he tried so desperately to separate them. He's scared to go to sleep now, for fear that he won't know dream from reality.

 

He stays awake, propped on his elbows, focusing his eyes. He's lying on concrete and newspapers, the full moon shining blue upon him; he doesn't need to seek shelter to sleep as the days are getting warmer, and he likes feeling exactly when the sun wakes him, but the sun seems too far away now.

 

There's a movement around his ankle, and the snake curls around his leg before he can think to stop it, coils around his boot and grips him firmly. He stays very still, paralysed.

 

He remembers another story he's heard, from them, from what many of them believed before: sees before him a woman and a snake offering her knowledge (of good or evil or truth or lie, he doesn't know), in the shape of an apple. She takes it willingly and condemns herself. He sees the snake, what shimmers golden between its fangs

 

_Idunn_

 

A green snake, with golden coloured scales on its head that look like horns.

 

He lies still as it slides up his leg, grazing slowly the inside of his knee. He'd rip it off himself, but he finds it impossible to tear his eyes off it as it moves with lithe grace. Its eyes are green, a green he's seen before. He finds himself retelling something he's told before,

 

_There was one time my brother transformed himself into a snake, because he knows how much I like snakes. And so I picked the snake up to admire it, but then he turned back and went 'AAHH! It's me!' And then he stabbed me,_ he told Banner and

 

A  _stab_ of hurt makes the snake flicker and disappear. He misses them, and he wonders if she's dead, what happened to her, but the thought hurts so much and not knowing where it belongs hurts so much more than the weight of the snake and the shifting movement of its cold scales upon his leg.

 

He thinks of ripping it off now, when he feels it turn real again and reach his thigh, stroking the muscles there to make his hair stand on edge, when the apple nuzzles his groin, he wants to act--

 

But the snake turns into Loki, grinning around a golden apple in his mouth. Thor gasps and his eyes widen; time stands still. Loki is bathed in moonlight but golden, as if he's in a bath in the halls of Asgard, and his light doesn't match the light around but Thor can't catch the surrealism because his brother is  _naked_ , skin glistening, dripping wet on top of him, straddling his left thigh. He straightens his back in a snake-like movement, readying itself to strike, and while their heads are now at a level Thor's eye follows the rivulets running down his pale chest, glimmering, beautiful.

 

Loki's arms slide up his chest and push him down. He slides up his body like a creature of horror, languid and pale and  _wrong_ , and when he reaches Thor he can see Loki's green eyes, green and black with pupils blown wide and Thor's mind wanders to the silver tongue in the golden apple and he can't stop his own mouth but  _bites_ into it, face to face, eyes staring, bodies too close, the juice of the apple spilling on his chin, Loki's eyes rolling back with  _lust_ \--

 

And he wakes up with a start, jumps, feels his body, doesn't dare look down.

 

The feeling that assaults him next he doesn't know, he's never felt it before—his breath quickens and he feels overwhelmed and his ribs feel hollow—and then he recognizes it as panic, and stops, tries to stop.

 

He feels nauseous, the taste of apple a mint lingering on his tongue, and he drooled during his dream. He spits and retches, but it's only dry heaves, for there's nothing to vomit; the poison is already in his veins, he can't throw it up, it's too late.

 

Too late.

 

He whimpers without being able to help himself, he wants to forget this, _now_ , but everyone else is asleep, he's too confused to be able to reach their belief, and he can't go back to sleep so the only thing he has is _reality_ and _truth_ and it _slams_ into him, _stabs_ him, he feels too real, too present, like he hasn't been in so long--

 

Shame washes over him and he pulls at his hair, groans, first a soft grumble and then a panicked roar. The sky echoes him, static in the clouds, but he can't care, he can't control himself anyway, he's _disgusting_ and _wrong_ and

 

Some voice inside of him tries to snap him back, but he's lost touch with this part of him, the real him, so much that he doesn't know how to listen to himself any more, how he used to do it. The feeling of wrong settles deep in his abdomen, braids around his intestines, twists hard.

 

He tries to push the blame aside—it's _them_ , their stories, this didn't come from within him, this want is not his own—but the point is he doesn't _know_ if that's true. They say that dreams are Loki's realm, and then, then... was this Loki? Did Loki send him this vision, to tempt him, to confuse him?

 

And yet another voice screams _no, Loki is DEAD_ and that throws him back down to the floor, convulsing, because he doesn't know any more which truth is his and which is theirs and which is lie and which helps and which hurts, and it all explodes in rivers of lightning that rise up from his chest.

 

The storm is fierce, and Thor cries somewhere, cries for his brother and for his own mind, and he would beg a god for forgiveness, but he can't ask the All-father because he was their _father_ and because he's dead and because now the All-father is Thor himself.

 

But they're waking up. One by one people gather around him, watch his lightning, and he wants to scream at them to stop but they join hands and sing, and he knows that if they pray to him now he'll most likely destroy everything around them and kill them all with the surge of power from their worship.

 

But the surge of power never comes, and he realizes, slowly, as the sky burns purple and blue and green with ozone and sparks and flashes of light, that they're not praying to _him_.

 

They're praying to Loki. They pray that he come and lull Thor to sleep. They pray to drown his light in darkness and his exaltation in quiet. They pray for the bliss of forgetting, for the truth to stop hurting, for dreams and hope and lies to remove the violence of reality.

 

And Thor's feet sink down to the ground again, and his lightning ebbs, and even though he wants to panic again, he wants to hurl truths at them, his eyes slowly roll back into his head and he loses consciousness.

 


	4. Asunder

When he comes to, the sun shines in unreal glory. The light is golden but the sky is of an aggressive blue. The dissonance is striking and violent in his head as a first thought; not even a single cloud mars the depth of its colour, gold and blue, and it's so much he has to fight to keep his eyes open.

 

He raises a hand to his temples, then his touch lingers; his hair is no longer a tangle around his head, it seems to have been trimmed.

 

The now familiar feeling of panic begins to pang in his gut, flooding in slowly like a rising tide. Is this a dream? Is this golden light even possible in this spring, wherever on Midgard he is? Is he remembering the first days stranded here, after the battle on Wakanda, where his hair was still short?

 

He remembers falling asleep and then only darkness. So, this _must_ be a dream. He would not fall asleep without dreaming, that is not a mercy he can count on.

 

He rises to his feet. He looks down: his armour looks polished, his clothes underneath feel clean. His hands look like they haven't looked in months: no soot lines their ridges, there's no dirt under his fingernails. He _must_ be dreaming.

 

He takes a tentative step. He still feels like something, a force, cushions his footfalls. Doubt twists ugly within him: he's felt this being awake, as well, but it certainly wouldn't be foreign in a dream.

 

His breath hitches. For the first time since he started his migration, he curses his actions: he curses falling so far into an escape that he now no longer knows what's real or not. If he hadn't stopped being Thor back then, if he'd confronted what he needed to confront instead of pushing it down in waking time and confined it to dreams, the dreams wouldn't have overpowered. The real and the lie wouldn't have mingled. He wouldn't have--

 

His head hurts again, and he brings his hands up to hold his skull together. He's tired of this panic, he's tired of the pain. He's tired of the guilt. His head tells him that if he tries to get lost again now he'll completely lose all hope of ever waking up and being himself again, but some part of him accepts that that was simply what he wanted in the first place.

 

So he reaches out, mentally, takes a tentative _mental_ step towards the humans that worship him, tries to feel where they are.

 

His lips curl upward when he finds their belief, finally, and he lets out the breath he was holding. Something screams that he's being careless, that they now dictate how he feels, that he _depends_ on them, but the screams are drowned in the warm honey of their faith.

 

He remembers his purpose, the goal he'd set himself: find the land where they were worshipped long ago, lead them north. So he walks on, his footsteps godly, golden, a benevolent smile on his lips.

 

They know better than him, anyway.

 

They know that there's little use to get lost in the truth. They know that it doesn't truly matter what's real and what isn't, so long as he keeps walking and leading them. They know that he's the God of the new Truth, and the new Truth is this: whatever they want it to be.

 

And in this, he feels like this can be his awake, and turns into the Allfather again, the God of the new Truth, their freer and their leader and their salvation from the bleak grimness of the past.

 

*

 

 

Their voices turn to spin truths anew, and now he accepts them like the tankards of ale the priests give him. He doesn't look twice and drinks it down, relishing in its sweet malt, letting it flow into him, fill him, contents in its effects.

 

Spring was the time of soft rain and sacrifices in his name, when they honoured his battles and his strength and let him break them free from the frosty yoke of winters past. It is the time for flowers to break through earth's crust, tentatively seeking the sun; but now that they've broken through, it is time to grow.

 

He feels it with each step farther north, with each longer day and redder sunset: the tension, the need to grow, the need to procreate.

 

But when he stops drinking their myths, the bitter after taste of the ale hits him: an ethylic tang that cuts trough his throat. If they need this, and he's their fertility god, then that involves things he can't let himself fall into. He can't. He won't.

 

And his self-control hurts because it means rejecting their truth, and he knows, he just knows, that he can't do this for long before the shame of his own reality becomes too strong to bear and he has to keep believing what they believe of him.

 

He doesn't want to wake up, so he doesn't go to sleep. He marches on during the day, and in the night tries desperately not to loose his grip on his waking dream, watching the darkness with distrust.

 

 

*

 

 

But it can't last.

 

One afternoon, when the sun has warmed his back until he has to remove his armour, when the air is sweet with the pollen of flowers and his mind is dizzy from lack of sleep and their desperation, he arrives at a congregation that waits for him clothed in sunset.

 

They are beautiful, shimmering in red and gold, welcoming him. Behind them is a river that reflects the golden rays of the sun and blinds him.

 

There's a feast, and this time he accepts their drink: honey wine, mead, rich gold sweetness that slides into him like sin and affects him quicker than ale. It has no bitter after taste, only the reminder of the pollen he smells thick and heavy in the dense midsummer air, of the low hypnotizing hum of bees drenching themselves in these molasses and carrying them on from flower to flower, mixing and mingling their fertile essence.

 

They tell him where he is, show him a map: the river is called _Elbe,_ and he recognizes the easy way it rolls off a priestesses' tongue: it's an ancestor of another word that simply meant _river._ And this ancestor is the people he's looking for, the lands he's trying to reach. Their memories are so near that he can grasp them, that the rivers he stops at carry their denominations in the steady flow of their water, and this fills him with an euphoric sense of accomplishment.

 

He watches them dance and drinks and feasts, takes in eager glances of every sex, and the river flows slowly from gold to copper to silver, but the air never loses its warm husk.

 

His mind spins, and he feels his breathing heavy in his chest, his insides coated in warm gold that's slowly turning dark. He kisses the priestesses' hand and her eyes look dangerous, but he rises and goes, humming with the power of the feast they're consuming for him, of the animals slain and roasted in his name.

 

He tumbles, drunk, drinking still, towards the riverbed, and sees people bathing, reciting things in prayer. They're preparing for something, he can tell: some form of a rite, although of what type he could not gather. The air is thick with their anticipation, the tension in the wait soaking through their murmurs. Yet he pays it no mind; he cares not for whatever rituals they've made up now.

 

He keeps walking until he's farther from them, until their banquet is no more than an echo, and looks at the last red ray of the sun being swallowed by the horizon. Into this red density he sinks, humming softly, staring on; and his mind sinks into sleep as well, warm, buzzing, like he's sinking his feet in pollen.

 

He sinks. All is golden around him, and the light comes from within himself. He feels still their anticipation, but now it's getting closer to resolve, it's getting closer and closer and he's sunk so deep into their excitement that he's already half-hard by the time he starts dreaming.

 

He feels a tingling of pleasure, and suddenly he knows why they were bathing, why the feast, why they were at the frontier, waiting for him: they're having an orgy.

 

In his name.

 

He's drunk and he's asleep. He can't stop it now.

 

He closes his eyes and feels the wrong spread like poison in his gut, dark green, but it mingles with the deep gold of his desire— _their_ desire—and it feels too good to matter. He holds his breath when a wave of lust comes over him, then slowly groans, unable to control it.

 

They have started. It works in vogues, their sex, like they're all synchronized but all that gets through to him is their collective pleasure. It's rhythmic, slow by now, and yet the waves hit him harder every time. He tries to resist it, but with each uprush the blood flows farther south and with each backwash he's left gasping for breath, shuddering with pleasure.

 

He hears the hiss at his ankle, but this time there is no snake.

 

He doesn't want to look, not when he's like _this_ , half-hard and naked and horny with a pleasure not even his own. But the weight settles warm against him, and it's not scales but skin. He whimpers after another vogue and his eyes open, pupils blown to hell and back, dizzying his vision.

 

It's a blur, at first, what's dragging towards him in a serpentine motion, uncanny and wrong; but it crystallizes soon enough into his brother, naked, wet again.

 

Loki grins and darts a sin red tongue out to lick his lips, and Thor feels wrong with how intently he follows the motion of it, how he can't look away, how he's not sure if the twitch he feels in his cock came from them, or from the image before him. Wit grasps him, for a second, and he wants to scream _no_ , wants to kick him off, but then another wave of pleasure hits him and he moans, deep and low, and his eyes and resolve flutter close. It's like the tide, the rising tide, and the waves are slow but each is heavier and more laden than the last.

 

When he puts his eyes back on Loki he's much closer, a looming being of shadow, his skin silver pale and shimmering, his obsidian hair a-glim, framing the sharp edge of his cheekbones under eyes dark and green like a poison sea—and it strikes Thor how impossibly beautiful he is, not just pleasant to look at or handsome but _beautiful_ , and he gasps again at the wrongness of it, of the expression in his brother's face that his sick mind twists into a lust as disgusting as his own.

 

Thor feels bile in his body but it's short lived, futile; it turns into pollen, honey, floods his insides warm and golden with the next wave.

 

He can't tear his eyes off Loki's half-lidded ones, marvels at his lashes and the fall of his iris around the hole of his wide pupil. He gets sucked into it and it feels just like his brother is trying to engulf him with his gaze. He looks so willing, and yet so dangerous, glimmering poison ready for him to wade through.

 

“Brother” Loki says, silver tongue curling around the consonants, and Thor must close his eyes or the lust threatens to overwhelm him. The sound of his voice is too much for him to bear, the word too heavy with a lust it should never weight. It rushes straight to his cock and he's fully hard now, from his illusion.

 

Then another wave from outside hits him, and he grips Loki's arm like a madman, desperate to touch.

 

He stops, petrified again. Loki laughs, and it _hurts_ , this maddening sound between childlike innocence and dark intentions, it evokes a past heavy with light and shadow he cannot have right now, he should not keep in mind right now—the memory of the golden halls of Asgard and them laughing and playing as brothers—but it's impossible to ignore, impossibly mingled and mixed.

 

Loki climbs into his lap grinning and Thor's eyes can't stare away from his mouth. He's not prepared for the desires that rise unbidden when he thinks once more of the tongue that hides behind his sharp white teeth, his sly tongue, his twisting tongue, _silver tongue_ , of the way it bends words and says his name and--

 

The next wave rushes over him, and Thor uses all of his resolve not to thrust up and into Loki—but his eyes are still on his mouth, his thoughts are still on his tongue, and he feels the want twist within him when he thinks, unbidden, of what else that tongue may _do_.

 

Loki keens and his maddening mouth falls open—and at once Thor knows that he _understood_ , as if he heard his thoughts, as if he's in his mind, like Thor so often suspected he was. He feels shame coil around his want, shame and fear, but Loki's mouth is open now and his tongue darts out to slide along his lower lip and upper teeth with full, mischievous intent and Thor groans in agony.

 

Loki breaks eye contact to look downward and the panic returns because _no_ and _wrong_ but his hips buck up in the next wave of pleasure and don't make contact because Loki's are no longer there and he sees them recede, feels him slide _down_ his body this time, eyes unfocused and lost as his brother's black hair grazes the skin of his abdomen and his mouth breathes ever lower, lower...

 

He clenches his eyes shut, _please no please yes_ and he feels Loki's breath on the trail that leads from his navel to his cock, raising goosebumps, and he wants to cry, but he can't do anything against this, wants it too badly, and he has no time to deny and he has no strength to refuse and Loki's mouth is over him, ready to strike, and.

 

The tongue _silver tongue_ licks up his shaft just as another wave from outside washes over his body, lapping at his skin just as his brother laps at his cock.

 

He groans, a long deep grumble as of thunder vibrating through his throat, and his eyes roll back. He can't see Loki come up, and grin, and enclose his length with his lips wrapped tight around his teeth but he _feels_ it and imagines how it must look and a tear does fall from his eye but the pressure is so _tight,_ so good, and would he really be like this, would his hot mouth really feel like this and his tongue do _that_?

 

The waves of pleasure wash over him more frequently now, rise, rise, the tide turning high and frantic with each bob of his _brother's_ head, orgasmic as _they_ are starting to climax in the background.

 

He doesn't know when he started but he finds himself praying his brother's name again and again and again, _Loki Loki Loki_ as the golden sheets turn into a roaring golden ocean wrecked by storm and high tide, and it only increases, increases, gets harder and hotter and _more_

 

and he thrusts harder, desperate for release, _whimpering_ , blinded in gold, but it goes on _forever_ and echoes far away moans and he _can't come_ , he can't, he's condemned to thrust and never get release, because--

 

Because he was asleep, and dreaming, and now awakes, hard and aching, pathetically bucking his hips into nothing and moaning Loki's name.

 

The sun is rising, menacingly warming the horizon, and his confusion twists into a sharp icy blade, and he doesn't want to wake up, oh god, no, he's not done yet--

 

A shadow blocks the sun and he sees the priestess from the feast looming over him, naked, and he would say something but he doesn't want to finish waking up, doesn't want the spell to be broken, he doesn't _want_ this knowledge that that was merely a dream, and he's drowsy when she pulls down his pants in one swift motion and sits down on his cock without even a second of halt or flinching.

 

He groans again, groans Loki's name, and he doesn't care that she hears. She knew this anyway. They _all_ knew. He fucks into her and she rides him, _venerates_ him, sways her hips into his with the deepest adoration.

 

He feels himself being sucked dry into her, drained, but he doesn't care, it feels too good now, and through his half-lidded eyes her silhouette is a dark shadow against the rising gold of the sun, her black hair and broader shoulders mistakable enough--

 

He comes in a few thrusts yelling his brother's name, and she clenches around him as if to avoid any of his seed escaping her, helping herself with her own finger to take her pleasure over the cliff as well.

 

Afterwards, she lifts herself off his lap without so much as a grunt, and kneels next to him. He doesn't look at her, can only look up into the yellowing sky, recovering his breath, the feeling of dread creeping along the edge of his consciousness, soon to emerge from his post-orgasmic haze but not just yet.

 

Her voice mumbles a prayer, and it gives him a surge of strength, but it also goes towards another: she's praying to two gods joined as one.

 

And then she leaves, leaving Thor to look up, paralysed, heavy and grey as a stone.

 

 

*

 

 

He doesn't know how long he lies there, on a rock next to the river. For days the celebrations go on, and he stares up at the sky during the day, eyes lit with thunder, and his sleep once again mingles with his waking world. He's a god of shame, to himself, to his father's name, but he lets it happen, lets it go on.

 

Eventually they leave, or they go on living as normal. They still pray, but they also build and do whatever it is humans do. Thor doesn't care; he lays on the rock and doesn't know how to move, turned to stone while the ever longer days wash over him like the waves at the riverbed.

 

And then they come and take him. He doesn't move or say a word or look at their faces, still. They put him on a stretcher and move him to the river, and onto a boat.

 

He knows where they are taking him, and it's ironic, because he thought that _he_ was taking them there.

 

He's lost to their world now, lost to their escapes, to their way of explaining away whatever they can't face, and in here it hits him: from the very beginning, this was _his_ undoing, as well. He led them on. He indulged in their fantasies and let his own wishes, of power and oblivion and divinity, guide him, instead of accepting the truth.

 

Now he's lying still on a boat and doesn't know how to move, can no longer distinguish his waking delirium from the dreams that have turned dark and grey.

 

His brain can no longer think like his own, so far mingled has it become with their truths. God of the New Truth, that he is, and as that all he has to do is lay still and feed off the faint echo of their cult, ignoring time and ignoring life and ignoring the ocean that laps at their vessel. All he has to do is keep the storms at bay so they can sail with him far north.

 

It all turns into a blur of colours and consciousness. Green and gold, silver and red. Sometimes bleak and sometimes shrill, but always a muddied mess of indistinguishable chaos.

 

The thought hits him, somewhere, at the back of his mind, that if they are right... If they are right, Loki has won.

 

And wasn't that the idea? If Thor is the God of Summer and Loki is the God of Winter, and they need _both_ to subside, need both to turn, didn't this need to happen? Didn't Thor need to step off his throne and let Loki arrive and take over for the rest of the year?

 

Was this their idea, or _his?_ Was this another one of Loki's betrayals, planned from the afterlife?

 

Soon, the summer solstice will arrive: the longest day of the year, where he will no longer know even night from day. And from then on, the days will only get shorter. Thor's waking world will turn to darkness, and there will be more time for the darkness of the night.

 

*

 

 

It's daylight, daylight, always daylight, when they reach the northernmost city where they were worshipped long ago. They set sail in mild weather, and with each day of sailing north the days become longer and milder. The sun is almost a permanence, now, in a sky with clouds put on hold. It scatters the sunlight, dispersion making it seem as if they're threading through a golden memory, swimming through the Mead of Poetry.

 

Within this paling gold they enter a gulf, and Thor breathes in the name it carried long ago:  _Niðaróss,_ the mouth of the  _Nið,_ the river they are floating on.

 

And in this drunken, babbling state, where he can no longer know when he normally slept and normally woke for he falls asleep and wakes without pause or periodicity, without a consciousness for either but only pale sun and Poetry and honeyed clouds behind his eyes, he groans and protests until they come to him and pour mead into his mouth.

 

His eyes are closed but the sun shines on and he whimpers as he chokes and drowns.

 

They do not know what they're doing to him, by bringing him here. Or maybe they do, for it is Loki pulling their strings, who called them to torment him with old words.

 

 _Nið, ergi, argr._ All words that have been associated with Loki, all words he's been called before, that Thor has fought and let slide alike. It feels, truly, like revenge, and maybe it is.

 

Thor no longer knows. He feels Loki nearing, slithering towards him through undergrowth and pine needles, a black and green blur marring his light golden dreams. But the nights stop coming altogether, and now he feels him always and never sees him, like he's being pulled out of his dreams and dragged outside, into the gold.

 

It is time, then.

 

The trees are sparse at the riverbed, the scenery littered with houses, some still inhabited. But they find a spot of isolation and carry him off the boat and into trees, a park maybe, man made yet reclaimed by overgrown ivy and fern and grass, green and luscious. They leave him on the ground, to feel the black soil breathing underneath him.

 

They gather around him, dressed in black. They undress him, wash him, yet it's all in a haze of halted golden clouds and the thick taste of honey in his mouth so he doesn't know who's touching him, what's happening, if it's wrong or not. If there even is right or wrong any more, in the mythology they keep twisting.

 

He lays propped up against a tree, to fashion him into the illusion that he's sitting, when truly he's just limp: a ragdoll to be positioned however they want, to serve as whatever they want to imagine him as. And he's never really been anything else.

 

He's hollow, and feels nothing but. His eyes stare vacantly at the river mouth as it shines golden and still, flat and polished like a plate, but what's to be served on it he doesn't want to ponder about, because he never wants to ponder about anything ever again.

 

He's sure that if they threw him into it, he wouldn't even sink, his emptiness would keep him afloat.

 

*

 

There is a minute of night, and Thor knows it's the last one.

 

The sun finally manages to set, and its red rays go, and there it is: a partial darkness, blue at last.

 

His eyes jostle awake for a second of knife-sharp clarity: his mind, returning one last time to say goodbye. He doesn't get to move his body—the mind needs to awaken before the body does, and he never makes it that far.

 

The images and the thoughts and the guilt and the regrets flood in, clear and cutting, silver blade _silver tongue_ between his ribs, cold and painfully real, and he takes a breath just as sharp, overwhelmed.

 

He couldn't face the pain of his brother's death, and so he led himself into a new, false truth that made him lose touch with everything that was real. He let his brother's memory be defiled by this new truth, let it be twisted and torn until it was only the vile shadow of what made him his brother before.

 

He wanted to be worshipped so badly, to be sung to, that he allowed them to feast and to kill and to fuck in his name. And there, drunken with forget, he'd done the worst of all: he'd desecrated his dead brother in ways no one ever should.

 

He is a disgrace to his parent's names, a dishonour to himself, no god but only a pathetic whimpering maggot, unworthy of life. He'd made it far as a warrior and as a king, all because of Loki's first two deaths, and he'd torn it apart just as quickly after the third.

 

Not a sound escapes him, but he's screaming inside. His eyes spark up with lightning, but the storm clouds never reach the sky, dwelling in his chest instead; the rain falls only from his eyes.

 

As soon as his eyes open wide in lightning, though, something happens: a crackle in his vision dissolves the view in front of him, makes it disappear in rippled white, dotted patterns fluttering over it like ants; it reminds him of the Television set in Jane's apartment, of the strange channels with nothing on that he'd come across when he pressed something wrong on the controlling device.

 

_Cosmic microwave background radiation,_ he hears her voice mention in passing, but this, too, dissipates, without him understanding the words.

 

It doesn't matter what the explanation for this might be, in what humans used to call science. He knows what's happening. He knows what's overcoming him, on his last moment of clarity, on his last flash of night.

 

A vision.

 

Wherever this is, whatever he's seeing, the night is much darker. It can't be here, not this far north, where the nights are vanishing and the sky is clouded, picking up and diffusing any reminder of light like cheesecloth over a lamp. Instead there is a crisp clarity to the air, a hard contrast between the pure blackness of the night and every visible object: as if the stars and the moon were holes punched into a dense black cloth where violent white light shines through.

 

The moon is full, a jarring, aggressive white that bathes the landscape in a silver glow and makes everything under its watchful eye throw clear-cut shadows, too defined, too contrasted for a normal night.

 

He sees a wide plain, a meadow of small sharp helms of grass. They are of a green that Thor imagines would seem poisonous in the fierce yellow sun, but now looks phantasmagorical, tainted blue and cold with surreal moon glow. Not a single blade stirs in the windless static.

 

His eyes focus on a small patch, unmoving, still as if frozen—and then he  _feels_ it: something lies underneath.

 

Between green blades of grass, sharp and tiny and reflecting silver, like knifes jutting out of the earth, the black soil stirs in a breathing and a hum. To his horror he sees them move, as if something was pushing the knife handles, twisting them upwards, making them quiver in ominous foreboding.

 

His breath catches in his throat, a shiver runs through his entire being, because there's  _something_ worming out of the now vibrating soil, a fat worm, a pale snake—and then he recognizes it: a finger. It pushes through, a silver appendix with soot encrusted in its pale nail, then another and another, mirroring each other, two hands positioned like moon crescents, pointing up at the blackness.

 

They push through the blades without getting cut, flex like snapping twigs, a motion unsettling and mechanical; then they lay splayed, palms flat against the soil, only for a second, before clawing at it for grasp.

 

He can't but watch, terrified, as they crawl forward with strain only to grip two tight fistfuls of black for leverage and push, two elbows jutting out; the soil surrounding them sinks, loosened, and a gap opens, grass helms sticking out in disarray.

 

He knows, then, exactly what he's seeing, what his vision shows. The forearms lay flat on the earth and he can feel the strength applied when they heave up two pale shoulders, and a black head emerges, face obscured by a curtain of hair deeply encrusted with dirt from below.

 

As soon as it does the creature gasps for air, desperate and loud, its face looking up, nose parting the black curtain to reveal its mouth agape.

 

He knows it's Loki, knew it of course even before seeing his lips and his teeth and recognizing them so thoroughly, but he's  _wrong_ , lowly and wicked and very foreign to his eyes, more creature than man—his gaping mouth monstrous as it greedily sucks in the air it must have been deprived of for so long, something animal behind the motion, something wraith-like on his unnaturally pale skin.

 

Loki moves his head from side to side with apparent strain, and Thor sees that it's because his hair is still caught in the ground, longer than he knows it to be, a veil spun over his head that keeps him trapped like a fishing net. Still he presses his palms against the grass in front of him after this small respite, and pushes.

 

Thor watches in abject horror as his naked chest emerges. The skin is a silver expanse, unnaturally cold, frostbitten and  _wrong_ as it stretches taut over muscles and ribs, and it is marred by the black dirt of earth not wanting to let it surface. He can't tell, in the moon glow that so changes the colour of grass, if this is but a trick of the light, this frozen blueish hue he sees in his skin.

 

Where his hip is still buried in the planet's crust the hair reaches too, cutting the torso with lines of a black that swallows the moonlight and gives no reflection, only cloaking him in shadow. He wriggles free and pushes a knee out, lets his body fall forward and uses arms and leg to free the other one, and he's _out_.

 

And within the unease, within the fear that twists inside him at seeing this creature that looks so utterly like a defiled version of his brother, still Thor feels the marvel, the awe at his body, at how terrifying but frail he looks—a shard of ice, menacing cold that could still break if tipped over. Loki stays on all fours, breathing hard, his hair finally free of earth's grasp clinging to the expanse of his back in tendrils and falling around his shoulders as silk.

 

He slowly arches his back, sliding his hands back and up the expanse of his body, straightening. And there Thor sees the last: Loki, on his knees, his naked chest glimmering like polished silver, pushing the long hair away from his face in genderless grace. He looks vulnerable. Strained. Confused, but not scared.

 

And as his vision starts to dissolve white again, blurring forst at the edges and then smodering at the centre, all horror leaves him, and even with his mind clear he can't but realize once again just how beautiful he is, how truly and undeniably desirable.

 

Thor's eyes snap back to normal. His breathing is ragged and panicked, his heart beats like a war drum.

 

But, just as the night started, it's gone again, a minute only, and the red rays of the sun raise again to lull him back to sleep.

 

And as his breath regains its impassive regularity, and the sky slowly turns to day again, he understands the peace and the perfection and the justice in what he saw: the future, one he's brought about, one he thought scared him, but now he finds that he can't but embrace it.

 

Loki will come back just as he wished, and he's defiled because Thor defiled him. It's poetic justice, and at last he sees no wrong in what's to come.

 

*

 

 

The next day is the day of the solstice.

 

He feels peaceful, his skin golden with the deep love they feel for him, with their belief and their adoration and their purpose. It's bliss, simple and ancestral, a dreamless dream on light.

 

He feels Asgard and honey and the apple Loki brought him, in his mouth, in a dream.

 

He doesn't blink, but it makes no difference if his eyes are closed or not.

 

They pray and they remove his clothes, so he sits naked now. His skin will be wet like it was in that golden bath with Loki, where he no longer remembers if it was dreamt or not, if they were children or men, if his brother turned into a snake or slithered onto his lap.

 

The light resembles gossamer drenched in honeymead, silver silk dripping in gold, dense and warm, but the air is light and cool and it almost feels impossible that this is the same reality, but maybe it isn't, and maybe that's just as it's supposed to be.

 

The hours don't go by, and yet there's a sundown, and the mead reverses into pollen, deep orange, and then starts bleeding over the sky.

 

The God of the New Truth looks at the blood red sky in childlike wonder. Someone pulls him to his feet. They caress the side of his face.

 

Black hair and broad shoulders.

 

He smiles then, and says, with longing, “Brother, come home”.

 

The silver knife buries hilt deep into his ribs, and he falls into the river.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit that was a wild ride
> 
> Straight up, I would not have posted this if it wasn't for @LeandraDeRaven, who is a beautiful human being, my best bro, and my boss. Seriously, this woman who ships an entirely different fandom (lol what is a Riverdale?) and doesn't even read slash devoted an entire day of her life just to force me to post this. Babe, you are the absolute motherfucking best and I know that I've been a frustrating mess today and thank you. Just thank you. Mostly for that hug a while ago, I think that's what did it the most.
> 
> Okay so, this must be a pacing disaster, and I understand. I understand. But I have been re-editing this thing for a week straight and I was NEVER going to post it, so it had to be like this. Maybe I'll post the original One-shot one day if anyone is honest enough to tell me that it sucked.
> 
> My intention was to make this Part One of a series, because make no mistake, I wanted to make the ending ambiguous but what I wanted more than that was to revive Loki so he could pork Thor. You're welcome, Loki. It would, like this one, span from solstice to solstice, taking all the pagan wheel of the year stuff with it. And it would have a couple more characters and some interaction and lose this terrible nightmare of an awful structure I can for the love of me not bear any more. So yeah, if you're interested, hit me up.
> 
> Please be completely honest with me. Not like, "You suck", but like, "You suck because...". Alright? I can take it, and I actually want to take it.


End file.
